娱乐英语新闻:China increasingly prominent at Vancouver film festival

VANCOUVER, Sept. 30 (Xinhua) -- Vancouver raised the curtain on its 29th annual international film festival Thursday with a line-up heavy on East Asian productions and highlighted by the Canadian debut of the Chinese blockbuster "Aftershock," which chronicles the 1976 Tangshan earthquake.

The festival, the fifth largest in North America, is screening 380 films over four screens during its 16-day run. The films come from 80 different countries and regions and are meant to provide Vancouverites with a good representation of world cinema as opposed to the standard Hollywood fare so readily available.

"Vancouverites love film. They just don't like Hollywood films, they want to see films from around the world," said festival director Alan Franey prior to the screening of the opening film, Barney' s Version, an adaption of Mordecai Richler' s 1997 novel about a man living with Alzheimers. "They are interested in what' s happening in China, France, etc. We get Hollywood films all year round. This is a chance to learn more about the world."

China is an area where festival-goers will be able to learn a lot about as 10 films from the Chinese mainland are being screened. Showing in the "Dragons and Tigers" portion of the schedule highlighting the films of East Asia, are such Chinese mainland productions as Crossing the Mountain, Fortune Teller, The High Life, I Wish I Knew, Rumination, Single Man, Thomas Mao and the black comedy Winter Vacation about slacker students returning home to a life of boredom in Inner Mongolia.

Highly anticipated is the Vancouver debut of Aftershock, Feng Xiaogang' s blockbuster about the Tangshan earthquake.

Shelly Kraicer, who programs the Chinese and Asian films for the "Dragons and Tigers" screenings, said while the festival had always supported younger filmmakers, creative films and art films, it was also important to show such films as Aftershock which broke all Chinese box office records.

"As well as showing little films by really young directors, it is important that we represent the breadth and variety of Chinese film making today. Aftershock is the greatest hit ever in Chinese film history and I think it speaks a universal language about family trauma and healing. So it will be pretty interesting to see how a Canadian audience enjoys it as well," said the Beijing resident.

He added his main criteria for selecting an entry was in seeing a film that showed him things he had never seen before.

"For films from China, for example, I want to see films that have new voice, or that show China in a new way. That shows something we don' t already know about China that will open our eyes, or open a new window. And it' s really important because there is no country more important to the world these days than China. So the better we understand China through its movies, I think the better off we are."

Freddie Wong is looking to show audiences something different. As a first-time director of the new Hong Kong film The Drunkard, the former film critic said it' s important for Chinese cinema to produce films with meaning instead of the stereotypical action and light comedy fluff movies.

He is currently taking his film, an adaption of a 1960' s novel by Liu Yizao, around the international film festival circuit prior to its general release to drum up publicity.

Following Vancouver, it will be shown in Pusan, Korea, and at festivals in Hong Kong and Beijing before being released at the end of the year.

"It' s very important for the film to get promoted, especially because I am a new director and then it is a small film. By going to many film festivals overseas, it will definitely help the promotion and publicity of the film," he said.

"I myself have been a film critic for a long time. It would be a change to have more films that are maybe more ambitious or maybe creative, other than films that spend a lot of money on action or as blockbusters. We really need more variety of films to be produced in Hong Kong and in the Chinese Mainland.

"The Drunkard is from a novel written in the '60s that complains of the commercialization of Hong Kong society. The things that they describe after half a century are things that are still the same. So you can see that it is a very serious problem."

Also appearing at the festival is Shanxi director Jia Zhanke who is in Canada to promote his latest film, I Wish I knew.